Google Losing War With Scraper Sites, Asks For Help

Got scraping issues? Google wants you to report scraper websites – those sites that exist for no other reason than to monetize copied content, usually with AdSense – in an effort to test and improve its algorithms. Blog scrapers are the big target.

Google’s Matt Cutts put the word out on Friday via Twitter: “Scrapers getting you down? Tell us about blog scrapers you see… We need datapoints for testing.”

Google’s form requires you to provide three pieces of information:

The exact query that shows a scraping problem, such as a scraper outranking the original page.

Before rolling out the Panda update, Google launched a “targeted” algorithm designed to better detect and reduce spam in Google’s search results and lower the rankings of scraper sites and sites with little original content. Only 2 percent of queries were reportedly impacted by the January algorithm rollout.